Our reporter Li Zhe reported from Beijing
On March 23, the National Press and Publication Administration released the approval information of domestic online games in March 2023, and a total of 86 games were approved. According to the statistics of the reporter of "China Business News", since 2023, 261 domestic games have been reviewed, more than the same period last year.
At the same time, the recovery of the game market is gradually emerging, and under the trend of boutique, the market is looking forward to more boutique game products.
Zhang Shule, a commentator in the game industry, said that the overall trend of the market will return from downward to slowing growth, and the game industry has embarked on the fast lane of high-quality and going overseas, and the "ceiling" of market dividends is being broken.
Breaking the "ceiling"
According to information released by the State Press and Publication Administration, 86 domestic online games received version numbers in March 2023. Compared with the 87 games reviewed in February, it is basically flat.
With the release of the March version, 261 domestic games have been reviewed in 2023. Correspondingly, a total of 512 games were reviewed in 2022.
The reporter noted that there were many products of head game companies in the approval information of domestic online games in March. Among them, Tencent's "Last Knife", NetEase's "Mission Zero", and Zhongqingbao's "Dawn Investigation Group", "Attack on Fortress" and "Phantom Pet Contract" have all obtained version numbers.
Speaking of the approval of the version number, a game company person told reporters, "There is still a process for the game to go public and obtain revenue, which is expected to have an impact on the company's performance in the future." ”
Zhang Shule told reporters that the release of the edition number has stabilized, and the market will return from a downward trend to a slowdown in growth. In his opinion, the domestic game industry has embarked on the fast track of quality and going overseas, and the dividend "ceiling" is being broken.
Galaxy Securities Research Report pointed out that in the short term, with the opening of a new round of product cycle, the positive signals released by the profit side and the policy side are expected to boost the valuation of the game industry.
In 2022, the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market will be 265.884 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 30.629 billion yuan, a decrease of 10.33%. Among them, the actual sales revenue of the mobile game market was 193.058 billion yuan, a decrease of 32.480 billion yuan from 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 14.40%; Since 2014, China's mobile game market, which has grown 8 times in 7 years, has declined for the first time.
Specific to the enterprise level, Tencent's total revenue in 2022 will be 554.55 billion yuan, of which the annual revenue of the game business will be 170.7 billion yuan. By market, game revenue in the local market was 123.9 billion yuan, down 4% year-on-year; Game revenue in the international market was RMB46.8 billion, up 3% year-on-year.
In addition, NetEase's net revenue from games and related value-added services in 2022 was 74.566 billion yuan, of which online game net revenue accounted for 92.5%, or about 68.97 billion yuan, and mobile game net revenue accounted for 67% of online game revenue, or about 46.21 billion yuan.
Boutique trend
At present, quality is becoming the general trend of the development of the game industry.
On March 30, the "2022-2023 China Game Enterprise R&D Competitiveness Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Game R&D Report") released by Gamma Data showed that the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed online game market in 2022 was 222.377 billion yuan, down 13.07% year-on-year. The "Game R&D Report" mentioned that in 2022, there will be a relative lack of explosive new products that can drive the growth of the game market, and some products with a long online time have declined due to the limitation of life cycle, which is part of the reason for the decline in revenue of self-developed games.
Although the revenue of self-developed games declined in 2022 due to many factors, the investment of leading companies in research and development still increased. According to the "Game R&D Report", in 2022, the total game R&D expenses of China's top 10 enterprises by market capitalization will exceed 38 billion yuan, maintaining rapid growth for many consecutive years. This shows that although the market scale has declined, the head enterprises still maintain a high willingness to research and development high-quality products, and their research and development competitiveness will continue to improve.
"Over the years, the number of games has been growing exponentially, but in the past ten years, the domestic game industry was addicted to skin renewal, copycats, lacked creative spirit, and despite the use of high-quality tools such as Unreal Engine, there was no real 3A masterpiece."
Zhang Shule told reporters, "In 2023, the game industry may be born in the true sense of domestic 3A game masterpieces, the overall trend of the entire game industry is good, some game companies (Mihayou, Lilith, Paper, Eagle Point) are rising strongly, driving the game industry to explore more possibilities." ”
On March 20, the State Press and Publication Administration disclosed the approval information for imported online games in 2023, and a total of 27 games in this batch received version numbers.
In this regard, independent science and technology observer Ding Daoshi told reporters: "Only an open market can have more supply, the market can develop forward, attract more consumers, and the entire industry can develop sustainably, stably and efficiently." ”
AIGC empowerment
In 2023, the digital economy, AIGC (AI Generated Content, refers to the use of artificial intelligence technology to generate content) has opened up more imagination for the game market.
At present, some game companies have already laid out in AIGC and digitalization. Up to now, NetEase's NetEase Fuxi and NetEase Interactive Entertainment AI LAB two game artificial intelligence labs have published nearly 200 AI top conference papers (top academic conference papers), with more than 400 invention patents, and won dozens of global AI championships.
In addition, in December 2022, Kunlun Wanwei released the full series of "Kunlun Tiangong" AIGC algorithms and models, and announced that the model was open source. Fang Han, CEO of Kunlun Wanwei, said: "Kunlun Wanwei is committed to technological innovation and development in AIGC model algorithms, promoting the development and growth of the open source AIGC algorithm and model community, and lowering the threshold for the use and learning of AIGC technology in all walks of life. ”
Among them, the application of AI in the field of music production has begun to bear fruit. SkyMusic, a subsidiary of Kunlun Wanwei, is the first commercial-grade composition AI model in China, targeting the global music market, and has released nearly 20 AI-generated songs in the United States, South Korea, Indonesia and other countries and more than 180 audio and video platforms around the world.
Galaxy Securities Research Report pointed out that the application of AIGC in game development and operation will continue to advance, improve R&D efficiency, enrich game playability and expression, and greatly realize the cost reduction and efficiency increase of game manufacturers.
Zhang Shule said that AIGC can indeed become an auxiliary tool for game research and development, but the current technology is not yet mature, it can only be an auxiliary, and it cannot become a "plug-in". At the same time, the growth of the gaming market is still driven by creativity and technology, not just unlocking more convenient tools. Even if AIGC is widely used, game development is still a process of creative accumulation and brain opening, and there will be no blowout of high-quality games due to auxiliary tools.
"With AIGC, in the future, in the production process of large-scale triple-A games, the number of people who make games can be greatly reduced. Some domestic companies have begun to try to apply artificial intelligence large models to improve efficiency in this field. In this way, more games can be developed simultaneously without increasing the number of R&D personnel, and the population advantage can be truly transformed into a talent advantage. Ding Daoshi said.